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THE 36TH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
We have just completed
our 36th Anniversary Report, a voluminous document of over
800 pages listing all the grants awarded by the Memorial
Foundation since our inception. This report provides a detailed
and comprehensive picture of the Memorial Foundation's fulfillment
of its mandate to reconstruct Jewish cultural life around
the world after the Shoah, and the evolution of our programs
over the last three decades.
Because of its bulk and the cost incurred in mailing this
report, we decided to highlight in this letter some of the
Foundation's most important contributions in the creation,
preservation and dissemination of Jewish culture in the
post-Holocaust era in this Board Briefing.
Since its inception in 1965-66, the Foundation has allocated
$75,500,000 for Jewish cultural and educational activities.
The Foundation has granted $29,739,000 for 11,895 scholarships
and fellowships and $45,761,000 for 5,836 institutional
grants. The former include 2,895 Fellowships, 3,034 Doctoral
Scholarships, 3,234 Community Service Scholarships and 2,733
Post-Rabbinic Scholarships.
Scholarships and Fellowships
The men and women supported by the Foundation's Scholarships
and Fellowships constitutes a mosaic of the new generation
of scholars, writers, academics, rabbis, researchers, intellectuals
and artists that filled the vacuum created by the decimation
of the Jewish cultural elite in Europe during the Holocaust.
The replacement of the generation of cultural and intellectual
leaders that perished in the Shoah is the primary mandate
of the Foundation.
Most impressive among the list of Foundation recipients
who received such support are the thirty-two recipients
of the Israel Prize, the most distinguished award in Israel.
Among them are such individuals as Professors Menachem Elon,
Gershon Shaked, Haim Beinart, Chaim Dimitrovsky, Eliezer
Schweid, Moshe Bar-Asher, Joseph Dan, Adin Steinsaltz,Yehuda
Bauer Aviezer Ravitsky and the most recent awardee in 2002
Prof. Nahum Rackover, for his pioneering work on Mishpat
Ivri.
No less important are the hundreds of young men and women
from the Diaspora who, with Foundation support, studied
to prepare for professional careers in Jewish educational
and communal work, and returned to Latin America, Western
Europe the former Soviet Union, Africa and Australia to
serve there.
Through the Scholarship and Fellowship program, the Foundation
has played a central role in the dynamic recovery and growth
of the Jewish people in the post-World War II period, fostering
remarkable cultural creativity and service to the Jewish
Community and assuring the continuity of Jewish civilization.
Institutional Grants
Through the Foundation's program of institutional grants,
almost 4,000 books were published in all areas related to
Jewish culture in 30 languages, covering all fields of Jewish
culture.
Among the classic works of Jewish scholarship that we have
supported are the Steinsaltz Talmud, Torah Shelayma, Otzar
Haposkim, and The Encyclopaedia Talmudit. Other important
works include The Great Dictionary of Yiddish Language,
The Language Tradition and Bible Projects of Hebrew University,
Hispania Judaica, History of Jews in Muslim Lands, and the
Documentary History of Italian Jewry at Tel Aviv University.
The Foundation has also commissioned popular and scholarly
works like The Sephardic Legacy, edited by Prof. Haim Beinart,
published in Hebrew, English and Spanish; The Scroll of
Testimony, by the late Abba Kovner; The City of Hope, Jerusalem
from Biblical to Modern Times, published in Hebrew and English;
The Jewish People in the 20th Century, originally published
in Hebrew, soon to be published in English, French, Spanish
and German; and Kiyum Vashever, a two volume comprehensive
history of Polish Jewry from its inception to the Holocaust.
Eastern Europe and Russia
One of the most important areas of the Foundation's
work over the last three decades has been in the former
Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc countries in Eastern Europe.
Through our publication program, we helped Russian Jewry
to re-connect with their cultural roots which had been almost
completely severed during the decades that Eastern Europe
was under Communist rule. Through our scholarship and fellowship
programs and the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, we have assisted
Russian Jewry in developing the cadre of leaders to revive
and rebuild Jewish communal and cultural life there.
The 936 institutional grants we awarded to projects dealing
with Russian Jewry have lead to the publication of close
to 700 books dealing with Jewish culture in Russian, including
Zionism, Jewish History and Jewish religion, and the Orot
library for children, young people and families. We have
also supported a whole library of classic Jewish texts,
including the Russian translation of the Pentateuch by Shamir,
and more recently the Hertz Chumash, selections from the
Mishna and Talmud, the writings of classical Jewish philosophers
like Maimonides' Moreh Nevuchim and Yehuda Halevi's
Kuzari, classical Jewish poets like Ibn Gabirol,
and the publication of an abbreviated Encyclopedia Judaica,
recently completed. These books were smuggled into the former
Soviet Union prior to Glasnost. These volumes, that grew
out of our pro-active stance in the pre-Glasnost era, are
now the core books in most of the libraries now functioning
in schools and synagogues in the C.I.S.
But books alone, as crucial as they are, did not a revolution
make. Revolutions, cultural ones too, are made by people.
In this area, we too played an important pioneering role.
Long before Glasnost, when the iron curtain seemed impenetrable,
the Foundation was supporting the training of Russian young
men and women for future service to the Russian Jewish community.
The 1,654 grants to individuals awarded in the former Soviet
Union and Soviet Bloc countries and now in the CIS have
helped train many of the leaders for the Russian Jewish
community globally. Among them are former prisoners of Zion
and dissidents Yosef Mendelevich, Yosef Begun, Yuli Edelstein,
Eliyahu Essas, Shimon Grilious, Zeev Dashevsky and Benjamin
Fein, the two current Chief Rabbis of Russia, Beryl Lazar
and Adolf Shayevich, the religious leaders Yaakov Bleich,
Pinchas Goldschmidt Zinovy Kogan, and many of the other
rabbis, educators, communal workers and Klei Kodesh
who are the mainstays of Jewish religious and cultural life
in the C.I.S., ranging from Chabad to the Reform movement,
now serving in Bishkek on the Chinese border, all the way
to Tallin, across the bay from Finland. We have also supported
communal leaders Iossif Zissels and Gregory Krupnikov; educators
Gregory Lipman, Mark Groubarg; Grigory Shoihet and Hana
Rotman; the scholars, writers, intellectuals, artists who
are providing the cultural leadership of the community,
people like Professors Mikhail Krutikov, Vladimir Shapiro,
Arkady Kovelman, Alexander Militarev, Ilya Dvorkin, Ilya
Altman and Mark Kupovetsky; writer David Markish and composer
Mikhail Gluz.
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The
finest example of our role in community building in the CIS
is the Association of Jewish Schools of the C.I.S. and Baltic
States. The major achievement of the Association has been
the seventeen seminars that the Association has sponsored
over the last decade. It has also been critical in strengthening
the Jewish schools in the C.I.S. as the cultural center of
the community, helping transform the schools into a conduit
for the dissemination of Jewish values and culture throughout
the C.I.S. The growing role of the schools as one of the vital
transforming institutions in the community, seeded and nourished
by the Association, is a major Foundation achievement.
Holocaust
The Holocaust has received
special attention since the Foundation's inception. In the
beginning, the focus in our work on the Holocaust was largely
on history, documenting the facts of the Holocaust and recording
the full dimension of this tragedy. The most important accomplishment
in this phase of our activities, now completed, was The Pinkassei
Hakehillot — the history of the destroyed Jewish
communities in Europe, published by Yad Vashem. Other volumes
were published in numerous languages, with Foundation assistance,
by leading international Holocaust scholars, like Professors
Yehuda Bauer, Deborah Lipstadt, Geoffrey Hartman, Franklin
Littell, Lucy Dawidowicz, Martin Gilbert, Israel Gutman and
other researchers, resulting from the grants made by the Foundation
in the area of research, documentation and commemoration of
the Shoah.
Even during this first phase of our work, we deemed it important
for the Foundation to initiate effective programs on Holocaust
education as well. We developed an excellent collaborative
relationship in this area with Yad Vashem, which has resulted
in a veritable library of Holocaust educational programs and
curricula, and the training of thousands of educators all
around the world through the International Center of Holocaust
Education at Yad Vashem, for which the Foundation provided
initial seed money.
The Foundation believes it is imperative
to move beyond history and education, the activities to
which we have devoted our major resources in the last three
and a half decades, to the vital task of integrating the
Holocaust into Jewish philosophy, thought and theology.
In that connection, the Foundation organized
two pioneering colloquia in Ashkelon, Israel, that dealt
with the impact of the Shoah in Jewish theology and religious
thought, and the implications for Jewish education. Two
volumes, including the papers presented there, and a Reader
on Holocaust Theology, will be published by the Foundation
in the very near future.
Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
The Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
is a pioneering venture designed by the Foundation to develop
leadership for Jewish communities around the world. It provides
an intensive experience in Jewish learning, living and leadership.
Ten successful Nahum Goldmann Fellowships have already been
held since 1987 in Western Europe, the CIS, and Latin America,
in which 358 Fellows participated from 49 countries, from
Uruguay to the Ukraine, Guatemala to Greece, Cuba to Croatia.
This diversity is not only geographic but
ideological as well. The Fellowship resembles the Jewish
rainbow — liberal, secular, Orthodox, and even marginally
affiliated Jews from widely divergent backgrounds who are
seeking to secure their Jewish future personally, as well
as that of their Diaspora communities.
The alumni of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship are now serving
in positions of communal and cultural leadership in Jewish
communities — large and small — on six continents.
Among them are Lena Posner-Korosi, President of the Stockholm
Jewish Community, Frederic Brenner, the internationally
known photographer, Jacqueline Goldberg of the Institute
for Policy Studies in London, Zinovy Kogan, leader of the
Reform Movement in Russia, Rabbi Yitzhaq Haleva, Deputy
Chief Rabbi of Turkey, Leszek Piszewski, former President
of the Warsaw Jewish Community, Marcelo Cynowitz, a leader
in the renewal of Jewish education in Montevideo, Uruguay,
Reina Roffe, one of the first activists in the revival of
Jewish life in Cuba, Grigori Lipman, Chairman of the Association
of Jewish Schools in the CIS and Baltic States, Rebecca
Neuwirth, special assistant to the Executive Vice President
of the American Jewish Committee, Jo Toledano, Director
of the Andre Neher Institute in France, Motya Chlenov, President
of the Association of Jewish Graduate Students in Russia,
Jacques Sebag, a leading educator in Morroco, Don Kantor,
Secretary General of the Finnish Jewish Community, Daniel
Hoenig, Vice President of the Sydney Jewish Community and
Igal Permouth, a community leader in Guatemala.
Assuring the Jewish Community's Cultural
Vitality
Over the last thirty-six
years, the Foundation has evolved into the only global body
dealing exclusively with the cultural challenges facing
the Jewish community. In that capacity, we have attempted
to confront one of the most vexing problems faced by the
Jewish people today. In almost all Jewish communities in
the West, the emphasis for Jews has largely shifted from
the perpetuation of Jewish cultural distinctiveness to their
integration into the larger society. Even in Israel, in
the aftermath of the Holocaust, enormous effort was expended
for the physical and material reconstitution of the Jewish
people. In the transformed global society and Jewish community
in which we now live, the "normalization" of the
Jewish people poses major challenges, and opportunities,
to the Jewish people's continued cultural vitality.
In addition to the close to 18,000 grants
we have made to individuals and institutions for the creation,
intensification and dissemination of Jewish culture around
the world, we have also developed pioneering and innovative
programs to assure the continuity and cultural vitality
of the Jewish people globally. These include the Jewish
Heritage On-Line cultural magazine reaching 40,000 readers
monthly; programs to involve the Jewish cultural elite in
Jewish communal life; training communal and professional
personnel and developing educational materials for dispersed
Diaspora Jewish communities; developing model community
programs in Eastern Europe (Riga) and South America (Montevideo);
Mishpacha — a trans-denominational virtual community
— for engaging marginally affiliated Jewish families;
dissemination of the new technologies in Jewish schools
around the world; and organization of seminars and commissioning
of popular scholarly books to increase Jewish consciousness
and learning in Diaspora communities.
Our record in fulfilling our historical
mandate of reconstituting Jewish cultural life around the
world after the Holocaust and our efforts to secure and
strengthen Jewish cultural vitality in the 21st Century,
amply documented in the Foundation's 36th Anniversary Report,
should be a source of great pride to all associated with
the Memorial Foundation.
Warm regards.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Jerry Hochbaum
Executive Vice President
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